Michigan- have you tried contacting the rec leads at your local forest to get information about their (the forest's) meetings?
With less than a week to go before the '2nd' public registration deadline was set to expire; I called the people you refer to after being told by the national workshop sponsors (our quote/unquote 'leaders' )that they couldn't "force" our government employees to publish the meeting dates themselves.
After discovering that nobody had even so much as contacted them about publishing these dates (or anything
else regarding the meeting) AFTER I had continually screamed bloody murder to our people both local and nationally as to them not being published anywhere....I found out also that these forest employees had simply gotten a call from their boss informing them to simply 'be there' and nothing else.(one forest service manager had to even call the other to find out just what the heck was going on; which
to me is a pretty damn stark comparison to what was afforded in California where non-multi-use single track
only was trying to be pushed through sans any kind of debate).
As far as the forest service employees that "I" talked to goes.....I didn't sense anything but a willingness to engage whoever they could; nor a prejudice towards one machine using our forest lands over another.
On the other hand; when a man is treated rudely both on the local and national level when simply talking about publishing these meetings in the first place
in our own community....even to the point of accusations that he just may attempt to 'disrupt' the meeting
itself for doing so?....it's pretty darn clear to me that some things need to change 'up top' before I'll send a dime into national organizations turning a blind eye to this kind of crap.
Again, folks....we've got a funding committee meeting behind closed doors right now without so much as even a 'progress report' at out last public quarterly meeting involving the inevitable MAJOR incrimental raising of fees here in Michigan and just
how those 10's and perhaps 100's of millions will be spent over the next 25 years. (the span of time since this has last been looked at on this scale and more incredibly
worked on without even a publicly announced oft-delayed orv update plan in place).
We've got a lot of "me-only-trail" people and "everybody needs a subsidy" training instructors salivating over this upcoming windfall and I'm sorry....but every national organization out there has absolutely NO interest in fighting for the light of day to shine down on this critically important process.
If these national leaders won't comment on "22,000 member" anonymous representative councils or
all government-related public orv meetings cancelled for up to
6 months at a time (along with a litany of other simple 'right-to-know' issues such as the workshop fiasco noted above....what in the heck are these people
good for? Covering the arses of those seeking to shut
down trails for the vast
majority users in this community as is being done right now in the Hiawatha National Forest...and as was attempted but a few years ago to the tune of
100 miles in the Huron National Forest with the
rest of us asked to foot the $50,000 study
alone?.
We're not only bucking 'the greenies' here....but the single largest on/off road organization
in this country with a lot of
strange notions regarding both helmet use and their divinely annointed but SEPARATE place in this community we're
supposedly trying to build on (cough) "togetherness" and the "shared trails" concept.
